Joe Orton's weird upbringing inspired some of the blackest comedy ever written, including three hitherto unpublished early works. His sister Leonie tells Claire Scobie what life with the Ortons was like.

"Our mother was a cow. Mothers of writers are often strong characters, like Wilde's mother," says Leonie Orton-Barnett, sister of Joe Orton. We are walking along an outer ring-road of Leicester to the Toby Carvery for an eat-as-much-roast-as-you-like lunch - her choice, as it's near where she lives.

Since Joe Orton's death in 1967—he was murdered by his mentor and lover Kenneth Halliwell, who then committed suicide—all his papers and unpublished manuscripts have gathered dust in Leonie's attic. For the first time some of his first work, a novel, Between Us Girls and two plays, Fred and Madge and The Visitors, are to be published. Why now? She becomes a little tetchy. "Well, I had my own life. I wasn't just Joe Orton's sister or a wife. I love gardening, I have the dogs to look after."

John Lahr, who wrote Orton's acclaimed biography Prick Up Your Ears, had dismissed Orton's earlier writings. "I feel rather foolish," says publisher Nick Hern. "We had written them off and taken the Lahr line that they were juvenilia." Hern, who has known Leonie for over a decade, adds, "It's a bit cheeky to say so, but when we decided to publish she was getting a divorce, so there is also the monetary value. She's discovering herself rather late in life."

In the Carvery, Leonie seemed nervous at first. She drained half a pint of bitter and then the flood-gates lifted—generations of anger and the grim life of the Orton household flowed, and with the torrent came her own frustrations and loveless marriage. Blunt, witty and increasingly outrageous as the day progressed, Leonie Orton-Barnett is a woman unleashed.

Joe was 11 years her senior, Leonie's idol. "I was dim—not in the sense of unintelligent—but all the lights were turned out." Now having done O- and A-levels and Open University courses, she is a mixture of pub philosopher, street-wise lit. crit. and woman on the edge.

She was the only family member to write to Orton when he left home. Rolling her eyes skyward like a little sister does, even though she is now 55, she cringes: "Those letters I wrote to him are absolutely abysmal, spelling was just dreadful, but they belong to the collection." They are now in Leicester University. The Orton estate sold his entire works last January [1998] for £60,000.

Joe Orton left nothing to his family but everything to Kenneth, and Kenneth did the same for Joe. So if there is ever an irony that Joe would smirk at today it is how well they did when he died. "Joe died after Kenneth," says Leonie. (Despite his injuries Orton was still alive when Halliwell died from an overdose.) "We not only got all his money, but all Kenneth's money too. So in a way, his death helped me out. I could stop working in the factory with the £3,000 I got then."

Just before we met, Leonie, her elder brother Douglas, 61, a plumber, and her 59-year-old sister, Marilyn, a cutter (in hosiery), had gone to the hilariously camp production of Loot at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. This outing was something of a landmark: "We were a dysfunctional family . . . If our mother wasn't at work— in hosiery—she was down the pub. Then when she came home, she'd belt the shit out of us for some reason."

Didn't this bring you together? "No, odd that, we splintered. We were very insular and didn't like one another much. I was very jealous of my sister. Douglas was never in. It seemed Joe was the most favoured out of all of us."

John Kingsley Orton, as he was christened, seemed to know from an early age that he was destined for something more than the grey horizons of a Leicester working-class estate. Their mother, Elsie, pawned her wedding ring to pay for her favourite son's secondary education. When other kids were playing street games, Joe, an asthmatic, could be found curled up on the sofa with a book borrowed from the local library. He was different.

"He painted his bedroom with hieroglyphics and Chinese letters," and once, laughs Leonie, "he put on a play in the back garden. Marilyn and I were fairies, Douglas was a bear. He charged people a penny to watch."

Their domineering mother had aspirations which their put-upon father, William, a gardener, could not fulfil. "My father would have his dinner on a tea-plate. She called him Creeping Jesus and hated him because he didn't earn any money," says Leonie. "When he brought home £9 wages, she'd say, 'What am I supposed to do with that? It's neither arse-hole nor watercress.' You know she was so funny, putting those two images together . . . But it was cruel, she was always poking fun at other people." Leonie adds dryly, "Since Mother died nobody has put flowers on the grave, which speaks volumes, doesn't it?"

None of the family knew Orton was gay until after he died, but Leonie wasn't surprised. "One of the reasons Joe preferred men to women was because of this harridan of a mother we had." Leonie learned about his exploits in lavatories from the Orton Diaries, "I wasn't really shocked by his accounts—a bit by the one with the dwarf, but like all writers I think he probably exaggerated."

Yet without Elsie's cruel tongue Orton would probably never have learned to write such successful comedies. "Joe had a detached and funny way of looking at things which I think he got from my mother," says Leonie. He mined his upbringing for later work. Elsie would later appear thinly disguised as the bullying Kath in Entertaining Mr Sloane; William was cast as the cowering Hal [the author means McLeavy] in Loot.

As a way of escaping the mind-numbing humdrum of daily existence, Orton immersed himself in theatre during his late teens, joining local amateur dramatic clubs, then starting elocution lessons. In 1951 he won a scholarship for RADA. "Mother told everyone in the street that she was going to have an actor son," says Leonie. Orton would return home for two weeks every year. "I remember him changing," she says, "he started speaking differently. He'd kiss you, be affectionate. But he still had this detachment. He'd do all sorts of outrageous things; like when the tally-men came for payment, Mother would give all these hard-luck stories. Joe would hide a microphone in the serving hatch and tape my mum. Then he'd play them back and howl with laughter."

But it was only when Orton met Kenneth Halliwell that, as Leonie puts it, "this inarticulate young man became articulate." Orton found Gibbons, Shakespeare, fine art, and his muse. At first they wrote together, but everything was rejected. In 1957 Orton struck out on his own, severing the literary cord with Halliwell with the diary novel, Between Us Girls. It is the work from this period that Leonie is making available for the first time.

He is a playwright, not a novelist, so the book falters. It is about an aspiring actress, Susan Hope, who is duped into the white-slave trade in Mexico, before winding up in Hollywood. John Lahr described it as Orton's "first exercise in literary ventriloquism: speaking and yet not seeming to speak." The experiment doesn't always work. Susan Hope often sounds more like a camp young man, i.e. Orton. There are some Ortonesque gems, however, such as when Hope sees Evelyn Eliot at the station on their way to Mexico, who shines "with vulgarity; she had the glamour of a film-star and the accent of a crow."

The plays Fred and Madge and The Visitors, written between 1959 and 1961, illuminate Orton's iconoclastic view of life. For him nothing was sacred; at a time when the local bobby was still respected, his policemen are corrupt, weasel-like characters. Influenced by Beckett, the plays are surreal but very funny—an attack on lower-middle-class values and the obsession with work as a virtue. Doing their bit for the world, Fred rolls a stone up a plank of wood every day and Madge sieves water. Then they rebel and emigrate to an Indian fantasy-land with "swaying palms and the camels and the seductive dances of the Murri-murri". The Visitors is a loose sequel, set in a hospital with cold-hearted, indifferent nurses. It mocks the false sentimentality of death.

As Orton launched out on his own, the cracks in his relationship with Halliwell were beginning to show. Leonie met Halliwell twice. "When I went to see Loot in 1966, I went to their flat. The walls were covered with religious pictures—Michelangelo, the Crucification [sic] of Jesus—all images of death. I thought Kenneth was very odd. He brought out a Battenburg cake and then sat on the edge of his seat, shaking his head from side to side. I now realise he was very ill. He was desperate, crying out for help."

Orton had learned from his own fractured family life to deny the truth of what was happening around him. As he became the West End's most feted playwright, fraternising with the young Beatles, his life the stuff of the gossip columns, Halliwell became a manic depressive. Less than a year after Leonie met Halliwell, he would murder Orton, no longer able to cope with his lover's success.

Watching Leonie at home, I had glimpses of how the real and surreal blur. We were greeted by her 29-year-old daughter, Rachel, sitting on the patio cutting bananas out of yellow tiles for a pool-pond sculpture, blue lizards and jungle as the background. "It's to be like a Rousseau painting," says Leonie, who bustled around, finding Orton's original Sgt Pepper album, his old typewriter and much-loved grey fake-fur jacket which had been the dog's blanket for years (Leonie had rescued it from elder brother Douglas). With the jacket round her shoulders, she began reading out excerpts of Fred and Madge from the kitchen table crying with laughter. It all seemed curiously apt, an accolade to her "actor-brother" who once said, "You can't be a rationalist in an irrational world. It isn't rational."


ORTON INTERTEXTS

This is where we consider Joe Orton through other people’s works.

I recently discovered a poem by Ira Cohen entitled “From The Moroccan Journal” (1987) that includes the line: “ Is that Kenneth Halliwell looking for Joe Orton?” I will try to find out more about it. You can read the entire poem online at the following address: Go to: http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/i-cohen.htm < http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/i-cohen.htm > You can find out more about Ira Cohen’s work here: Go to: http://www.bigbridge.org/ira.htm < http://www.bigbridge.org/ira.htm >


ORTONESQUE: ORTON NEWS & TRIVIA

The New Group in New York is staging a new production of What the Butler Saw, directed by Scott Elliott, with cult actress Chloë Sevigny playing the part of Geraldine Barclay (presumably). The first preview took place on October 31. Opening night was on November 12. The play runs until December 10. Performances are at 8 pm Tues-Sat, 2 pm on Saturdays and 3 pm on Sundays. Performances take place at St Clement’s Church, 423 W. 46th Street (9/10th Ave.). This is what broadway.com has to say about it: “Chloe Sevigny, the Oscar-nominated actress of Boys Don’t Cry, will star in Scott Elliott’s production of Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw. The classic sex farce will play a six-week engagement at the The New Group Theater at St. Clement’s Church beginning October 31. Opening night is set for November 12. What The Butler Saw is the story of Dr. and Mrs. Prentice, who spend as much energy hiding their affairs as they do pursuing them. In addition to doing the occasional classic sex farce, the New Group is a non-profit organization that produces new plays by emerging writers and offers support for work in all stages of development. The New Group’s Founding Director Scott Elliott, who is known for both his stage work (Broadway: Present Laughter, Three Sisters, off-Broadway: East is East, Goose Pimples) and his film work (A Map of the World) will direct Dylan Baker as Dr. Prentice, Lisa Emery as Mrs. Prentice and Sevigny as Miss Barclay. Before she was Hollywood royalty, Sevigny was best known for gritty work in art house faves like Kids and The Last Days of Disco.” And here is The Village Voice’s review: “Joe Orton worked in the same tradition as Ayckbourn, much the way a dynamiter works the same mine as a shoveler. Orton was out to inject modernism's insanity into the nightmare erotics of farce, a task at which he might have succeeded more subtly if he'd lived. What the Butler Saw, his last play, is full of imperishably witty lines but a complete hell to put onstage. The writing's half Oscar Wilde and half Feydeau; either the epigrams block the action or it tramples them underfoot. And the farce has its own internal problems, including a carefree acknowledgment of sexuality that makes all its furtiveness absurd in the wrong sense. Scott Elliott's production for the New Group takes the bravest but least practical way out of this impasse: treating the piece as a work of wit, he slows it down, until the final bedlam, with chilling gravity. True, the witticisms are all audible, but the characters, with few exceptions, are reduced to monochrome, while the laughs vanish in the antiseptic air. For a final blow, Elliott has Peter Frechette's oleaginous Dr. Rance deliver his demonized interpretation of the goings-on, not to the person onstage with him, but into a tape recorder, at one stroke removing from the demented speech both Rance's delight in it and its dramatic effect. The moment's especially annoying because the other person onstage is the splendid Lisa Emery, who comes closer than any actress I've seen to making sense of Mrs. Prentice: self-righteous, embittered, bisexual nymphomaniacs traumatized by rape aren't easy to play. Especially with all those damn epigrams. The other strong performance, in a much less demanding role, is Max Baker's Sergeant Match.” Go to: http://www.newgrouptheater.com Go to: http://www.chloesevigny.com/ Go to: http://www.broadway.com Go to: http://www.villagevoice.com

In September 2000, Oh Happy Day, written by Monty Python star Graham Chapman and Barry Cryer, received its world premiere at a small Atlanta theatre 11 years after the author’s death. The play was discovered a few years ago by Chapman’s partner, the aptly-named David Sherlock. Jim Yoakum, one of Chapman’s writing partners who is now the director of the Graham Chapman Archives, chose to stage the play in Atlanta rather than London or New York for financial reasons and because he’d seen the improvisation company, Dad’s Garage Theatre, perform Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw. On the company’s website, the play is described as “a classic British farce in the tradition of the late Joe Orton.” Jim Yoakum explains that "Graham was a big fan of Orton's. And oddly enough, both Joe and Graham came from Leicester, England, although they didn't know each other.” He says that if Dad’s Garage Theatre “could tackle Orton, I knew they could do Oh Happy Day justice.” Jim Yoakum posted a message on Catharton’s Joe Orton Community moderated by yours truly: “I've recently had the pleasure to produce the world premiere of a newly-discovered play by the late Graham Chapman (Monty Python) called Oh Happy Day. Although Oh Happy Day is much lighter than anything Joe Orton wrote, I discovered there are many shared points of view and social comments by the two great humorists, including the introduction of sensitive gay themes, the influence (and even the mere point) of families, and a general disregard for conventional society. I know Graham was a fan of Joe's, and oddly enough, both men hail from Leicester, UK. I hope to stage the play again, on a bigger canvas, one day and/or publish the book. I think the Chapman/Orton connection offers rich ground for exploration.” You can find the link to Jim Yoakum’s Graham Chapman Archives below. Go to: http://www.dadsgarage.com/index.shtml < http://www.dadsgarage.com/index.shtml > Go to: http://www.grahamchapmanarchives.com < http://www.grahamchapmanarchives.com >

This is Leicestershire website has a “Famous Faces” section that includes a short biography of Joe Orton: “Controversial playwright Joe Orton was born in Leicester and went to school on the Saffron Lane council estate before moving away to become a drama student in London at the age of 18. His celebrated plays, Loot, What the Butler Saw and Entertaining Mr Sloane, are known for their black humour and detached style. Orton himself was just 37-years-old when he was hammered to death by his lover Keith Halliwell, who killed himself after the attack. Last year, Leicester University raised £80,000 to buy a stack of papers, letters and theatre programmes left by Orton and bring them to the city. The man himself might have found in this a deep irony—he disliked Leicester and even when he returned for his mother's funeral, wanted to get away as quickly as possible!” Go to: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/scripts/addarticle.asp?id=00000014&area=Local%20interest&s=famous%5Ffaces&opensect=Famous%20faces


ORTON BIBLIOGRAPHY

Every month, we will add a few more titles to what, we hope, will eventually become the definitive Joe Orton bibliography:

WORKS BY JOE ORTON

Orton, Joe. The Complete Plays. London: Methuen, 1976.
Orton, Joe. Fred and Madge, The Visitors: Two Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 1998.
Orton, Joe. The Boy Hairdresser and Lord Cucumber: Two Novels. London: Nick Hern Books, 1999.
Orton, Joe. The Orton Diaries, Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and Others. London: Methuen, 1986.

ORTON-RELATED

Chambers, Colin. Peggy: The Life and Times of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent. London: Nick Hern Books, 1997.

ORTON CRITICISM

Gallix, Andrew. “Pour une littérature irréfutable: Joe Orton et De la tête aux pieds.” Théâtre / Public May-June 1995: 65-70.

Scobie, Claire. “What the Sister Saw.” The Sunday Telegraph 13 September 2000: 9.

ORTON IN OTHER PEOPLE’S WORKS

Cohen, Ira. “From The Moroccan Journal.” 1987.

Mader, Travis. “Cut”. Duct Tape Press 24 March 2000. Mader, Travis. “Cut”. 3AM Magazine 20 November 2000.

ORTON LINKS

Every month, we will add another Orton-related link. This month we recommend South Bank University’s The Knitting Circle which runs an excellent Joe Orton page:

Click Here – The Knitting Circle

Click Here - Joe Orton Community

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